Tet Offensive
The Tet Offensive was a major, large-scale offensive undertaken by the North Vietnamese PAVN and its Viet Cong guerrilla allies into South Vietnam during the Vietnamese Lunar New Year (Tet) celebrations. The offensive struck almost every city in South Vietnam, but it was repulsed with heavy losses. The Viet Cong suffered such heavy losses that North Vietnam was forced to commit a larger share of the communist alliance's forces in future offensives, and the North Vietnamese failed to provoke a popular uprising in South Vietnam. However, the near-success of the invasion and the communists' ambitious all-out offensive shocked the US public, which had been led to believe that the war was almost won; after the Tet Offensive, the public no longer believed that the US strategy was working, and believed the war to be unwinnable. Background In the fall of 1967, Communist Party of Vietnam First Secretary Le Duan began to plan a general offensive into South Vietnam to bring an end to the Vietnam War. North Vietnam's civilian population was becoming weary of the war due to Operation Rolling Thunder, so Le Duan decided to gamble on a highly ambitious plan to topple the Saigon government in one swift blow. North Vietnamese forces would invade South Vietnam from the DMZ and from Laos and Cambodia and attack cities and bases all over the south, while the Viet Cong would step up their guerrilla attacks; the ultimate goal was to provoke a general uprising against the US-backed Saigon government, crush South Vietnam, and force the US to withdraw its troops as a result. Le Duan purged those opposed to the plan, sending several former Viet Minh heroes, cautious CPV leaders, and party members opposed to the offensive to prison camps such as the Hanoi Hilton. Through to the end of 1967, the NVA and Viet Cong engaged the United States and the South Vietnamese ARVN in a series of "border battles" to pave the way for a surprise offensive in January. The surprise attacks would begin at the end of the month, at the start of the Tet celebrations. The Viet Cong were already infiltrating cities and towns, while tens of thousands of NVA troops were standing ready in South Vietnam, being covertly supplied by the North Vietnamese government in preparation for its most ambitious offensive yet. Meanwhile, the US and South Vietnamese forces had noticed signs of a coming storm, taking note of irregular communist troop movements, as well as captured plans to attack key South Vietnamese cities and captured tapes urging the South Vietnamese to rise up. MACV commander William Westmoreland predicted that the attack would occur before Tet, and that the US Marine Corps base at Khe Sanh would be the main target. 30,000 NVA troops gathered near Khe Sanh, the westernmost stronghold below the DMZ, held by just 6,000 Marines. However, Westmoreland was sure that the other targets would only be diversions. General Frederick Weyand wisely repositioned half of the troops along the Cambodian border to the outskirts of Saigon in case of an enemy attack. Offensive ]]On 21 January 1968, the NVA began shelling Khe Sanh. When he learned of the attack on Khe Sanh, President Lyndon B. Johnson made the Joint Chiefs sign a pledge that the base would not fall, as he feared a repeat of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. Westmoreland and Johnson's main assumption was false, however, as Khe Sanh was the sideshow, and the main event would be the assaults on the cities and towns of South Vietnam. However, Le Duan's basic assumptions were also to be tested, as the ARVN would have to collapse and the Southerners would have to join the revolution in order for the plan to succeed. By 30 January, an informal 36-hour truce for Tet was in effect. Thousands of ARVN troops went home for the holiday, but neither the NVA nor the Viet Cong did. Instead, on the early morning hours of 31 January, 84,000 Viet Cong and NVA troops attacked 36 of South Vietnam's 44 provincial capitals, dozens of US and ARVN military bases, and the 6 largest cities in the country. In Saigon, Westmoreland mistook the first explosions as holiday firecrackers. His deputy commander Creighton Abrams was asleep, and his aides did not bother to wake him. Not a single top commander was present at Pentagon East, the MACV headquarters at Tan Son Nhut Airbase on the outskirts of Saigon, when mortars and rockets began cratering the runways. The Viet Cong spread out to attack specific targets in and around the capital, and the war finally came to the streets of Saigon. One Viet Cong squad made it all the way to the Presidential Palace, where they were stopped by ARVN tanks. The survivors holed up in a building across the street, where they were shot by ARVN troops and American MPs. Viet Cong units took heavy losses from US troops and determined ARVN forces across the city, but they managed to seize the main Vietnamese-language radio station in Saigon. The Viet Cong prepared to broadcast a taped message from Ho Chi Minh calling upon the people to rise up, but a technician radioed to the transmission tower and convinced them to play Vietnamese waltzes and Beatles songs instead. In the first few hours of the fighting, a specially-trained group of 19 Viet Cong commandoes blasted their way into the US embassy. All of the intruders were eventually killed or captured, but they held onto the embassy for hours and woke up the American public, who watched the horrifying news coverage of the embassy attack. An American Marine and four Army MPs were killed at the embassy. 's execution]] At the same time, Viet Cong assassination squads - some directed by the North Vietnamese - murdered several "blood enemies of the people", including bureaucrats, intelligence officers, ARVN commanders, ordinary soldiers home on leave, and their families. Brigadier-General Nguyen Ngoc Loan took vengeance on captured Viet Cong captain Nguyen Van Lem, shooting him in the head on live US television, with Eddie Adams capturing Loan's summary execution of Lem; the murder of the prisoner-of-war disgusted and outraged the US public. The Saigon suburb of Bien Hoa was also attacked, and enemy forces attacked both the airbase there and Long Binh, the largest American installation in Vietnam. At Long Binh, the Viet Cong slipped through the wires and blew up a huge ammunition dump, creating a prominent mushroom cloud. However, the attacks on Bien Hoa and Long Binh were repulsed with heavy losses. The American press mostly focused on the attacks on Saigon, but the Tet Offensive was happening everywhere. In most places, the attacks were being repelled by American and ARVN forces, and the NVA and VC suffered terrible losses everywhere. The Viet Cong captured Quang Tri Citadel for an entire day and night, with 600 men under Cao Xuan Dai going in and 300 being killed and 100 captured. The Americans called in massive air and artillery firepower to dislodge a Viet Cong regiment from the city of Ben Tre in the Mekong Delta, feeling that it was necessary to destroy the town to save it. ]] In Hue, the old imperial capital of Dai Nam, American supply boats heading up the Perfume River found themselves coming under heavy small arms and mortar fire around Hue. The longest and bloodiest battle of the Tet Offensive was fought in the streets of Hue, with the Viet Cong and NVA taking over both sides of the city on the shores of the Perfume River. Only the MACV compound on the south bank and the 1st ARVN Division headquarters within the thick-walled citadel on the north side held out against them. US reinforcements fought their way to the MACV compound before fighting days of block-by-block fighting to slowly retake the city from the communists. The once-beautiful city was devastated by the fighting; the civilians were herded into the university, while their homes became battlegrounds. The NVA and Viet Cong were soon trapped inside the city, and it would take two weeks for the Marines to fight their way across the river to support the besieged ARVN. After 26 days of fighting, the South Vietnamese flag was raised over the citadel, and the surviving NVA and Viet Cong were allowed to pull out. 6,000 civilians had been killed during the savage fighting; of the city's 135,000 residents, 110,000 had lost their homes. Before abandoning the city, the communist systematically executed 2,800 people whom they branded as "hooligans" and "reactionaries", including people who worked for the South Vietnamese government and the US military, as well as innocent civilians. They were afraid that, if they released their prisoners, they could return to the ARVN and US forces and identify the guerrillas. President Johnson insisted that the Tet Offensive had been a devastating defeat for the communists. Militarily, he was correct, as the basic assumptions on which the NVA had mounted their offensives had all proven to be wrong. The ARVN did not crumble, no ARVN defectors came over to the communist side, the civilian populace was more opposed to communism than their own government, and no civilian uprising occurred. Vo Nguyen Giap, who had opposed the offensive from the beginning, saw Tet as a costly lesson paid for "in blood and bone". Several high-ranking NVA commanders surrendered, something which had never happened before, and some NVA companies only had 2 or 3 men left. Of the 84,000 NVA and VC troops who took part in the offensive, as many as 58,000 (most of them Viet Cong) were killed, wounded, or captured. The MACV celebrated their military victory, but the public learned that Johnson's claim that the war was being won was false, as the NVA and VC were not even close to defeated. Aftermath The offensive broke the will of the US to fight the war, as it dispelled the fiction that the NVA and VC were on the brink of defeat, and that the "light at the end of the tunnel" was in sight. The war hawks in the government saw Tet as North Vietnam's last gasp, but the Pentagon deduced that the NVA and VC's commitment to the war taught them a lesson. Westmoreland went on to request 206,000 additional troops, leading to the public questioning if the offensive was a defeat for the NVA, as the US would still require more men to win the war. Senator Robert F. Kennedy said that the enemy had shattered Johnson's illusion, and that it was necessary to seek a peaceful solution. Soon, as the Democratic presidential primaries began, Johnson was in trouble; in the New Hampshire primary, he won with just 49% of the vote to anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy's 41%; Johnson had wrongly expected a landslide. Soon, Robert F. Kennedy announced his candidacy, and he was seen as far more popular than Johnson. Johnson's "Wise Men" advised for him to seek peace in Vietnam, and he only sent 13,500 more troops to Vietnam, not the 206,000 that Westmoreland had requested. He also recalled Westmoreland to Washington DC to serve as Army Chief of Staff, replacing him as head of MACV with Creighton Abrams. On 30 March 1968, Gallup reported that 63% of the public disapproved of Johnson's handling of the war, the lowest point of his presidency. The following evening, he asked for time on all three networks, and he announced that he had decided to stop bombing Hanoi and Haiphong in the hope that North Vietnam would finally be willing to enter into peace talks. Only the staging areas north of the DMZ would continue to be targeted. Johnson then stunned the world by announcing that he would not run for re-election, ending his presidency in shame. Category:Vietnam War Category:Battles